22 October 2002

In the Mind's Eye

Atheist physicist implies the existence of God?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright

in the forest, in the night.
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame they fearful symmetry?
— William Blake

Steven Weinberg, whom I had the privilege to know when I was a
graduate student, is an atheist. He believes the vast weight of evidence
gathered from 300 years of science since Newton points to the
inescapable conclusion that God, as Jews, Christians, Muslims, or anyone
else might conceive of God, does not exist.

Prof. Weinberg shares the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics
with Abdus Salaam and Sheldon Glashow for their key contributions to
what has become the "Standard Model" of elementary particle theory and
cosmology, namely their unification of the electromagnetic and
weak-nuclear forces. As such, Weinberg is eminently qualified to write
the three-volume graduate level text, The Quantum Theory of Fields.
As if this were not enough, he writes with a grace and clarity that
make it a relative delight to read what, in lesser hands, can be a
tedious subject. It is a "must read," if you are a theoretical
physicist. Short of that, however, there is still a revelation in it
that I must tell you about.

To begin, Weinberg admits that we believe that Quantum Field
Theory (QFT) is only an approximation to a more exact theory that may
grow out of current attempts at String Theory. Therefore, he emphasizes
those aspects of QFT that he thinks will stand the test of time, and
will continue to be features of a more advanced theory. The most
fundamental of those aspects is symmetry — the way the properties of a
particle stay the same (or not) under certain transformations of
space-time. These transformations are rotations (spinning around),
translations (standing at different places) and boosts (which are shifts
to a frame of reference that is moving at a high, but constant,
velocity). Together, these transformations are called the inhomogeneous
Lorentz group.
Now there are a number of mathematical ways to represent the
Lorentz group. Any set of symbols and rules to manipulate them will do,
provided that the symbols and rules behave the same way the Lorentz
group does. Those representations, that cannot be decomposed into
subgroups that also represent the Lorentz group, are called irreducible
representations of the Lorentz group.

And now the point of all this mumbo-jumbo: Weinberg writes on
page 63 of Volume I, "It is natural to identify the states of a specific
particle type with the components of a representation of the
inhomogeneous Lorentz group which is irreducible...."

I'm stunned by that statement. What it means is that the
irreducible representations of the basic symmetries of our universe give
rise to the possibilities of all the sub-atomic particles, and thus to
all the matter, in the universe. This is the closest thing you are ever
likely to see to a Platonic Form in actual existence and effect.

In case you skipped that part of the college experience, the
ancient Greek philosopher, Plato, a student of Socrates, believed that
things existed in reality only because their ideal, perfect Forms
existed in the realm of the mind. For example, a circle could be drawn
on the ground only because of the existence of the ideal Form of a
circle in the mind.

Now we know that Platonic Forms are hogwash, because our minds
are not powerful enough to make anything exist, just by thinking. One
can think very clearly of things that do not and cannot exist, and even
draw pictures of them, like the art of M. C. Escher. And yet, there it
is — the irreducible representations of the inhomogeneous Lorentz group
are the Forms of elementary particles, and thus, of all matter that
exists.

To me, it begs the question: In whose mind can the
irreducible representations of the inhomogeneous Lorentz group give rise
to reality? This is probably as close as theoretical physics has ever
come to postulating the existence of God, and we have been brought here
by an atheist.

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I'm a Christian and a retired weapons scientist, vocations which have sensitized me to some of the ways in which the world is dangerously insane. So, on 4 July 1996 I founded the Virtual Church of the Blind Chihuahua, which is moving to this blog.